Download Castlevania’s first level remade in Unreal Engine before it vanishes

Alright! Not only do we get to see what Castlevania looks like if it was remade in Unreal Engine 4, but we also get to see if Konami’s lawyers are as surgically precise as Nintendo’s.

Dejawolf, the creator of this remake, has been working on this remake of Castlevania’s first level for nearly a year, and as a fan game, it plays well enough. The character animations are not really up to speed, which he admits, but that level layout is unmistakable from the NES classic.

framerate is now massively improved in certain areas.

the culprit was dynamic lights from particle effects on chandeliers on the roof.

i made those lights static, and turned off the particle effects, and i’m now able to run those areas at over 30 fps on my laptop with a geforce GTX 860M with no loss of visual fidelity. the middle section of level 1 however has temporarily become a bit of a performance hog however, due to some testing i’m doing with deferred decals, so the laptop is struggling with those areas.

i’ll probably have to bake down those areas into textures instead or something. whip control has also been improved quite a bit. but i think i’ll work some more on that still. level 1 has been shortened a bit to conform more with the originals size. particularly the begin area was too long. i’ve also brightened up a few spots here and there, and proofed myself from an unreal bug which causes child blueprints to sometimes reset all values for no reason.

A Kickstarter for a Castlevania remake probably is not a good idea, though

I’m all for fan-interpretations of their favorite games and franchises. The legal gray area is certainly there to give it the image of legitimacy, just as long as indie developers are not profiting from other publishers’ creations.

That’s where this project steps over the line. Its creator has a Kickstarter running, looking for funding to finish the project, and he is not at all shy about using Castlevania’s logos and characters to make himself money. The community isn’t biting, either, with only $198 of the desired $72,574 raised. Who can blame them with a risk description like this?

the thing i’ve had the most challenge with is getting fluid animations for the player character to work properly, so even when the game is finished the animations might not be top notch, as i might have to backpedal on some of the more advanced animation routines in order to reduce the number of bugs on release.

the other challenge is working out all the legal stuff.

i prefer to fill my brain with how to make games, not how to do business,

so i’ll probably get someone else to help me out on that.

If you’re at the point when you’re running a Kickstarter, that’s when you toss your homage aside and create something on your own. You don’t even need a lawyer to help! That’s what former Castlevania producer Koji Igarashi did when he left his franchise, and he made nearly $5 million through Kickstarter!